Home Page

Running time: N/A

When everyone has the potential to be a public broadcaster, who becomes the documentor and what becomes of privacy? With Home Page, Doug Block (Silverlake Life) turns his attention to the burgeoning phenomenon known as the World Wide Web. Block became fascinated with the home pages that people would inhabit with their personal interests, thoughts, and feelings. He soon found that all links led to one page - that of Justin Hall. A charismatic and colorful figure with a hairstyle caught between Andy Warhol and RuPaul, the 21-year-old Swarthmore student chronicled his life and those that inhabit it in an online diary with such unflinching candor that even his girlfriend logged in daily to check on their relationship. As he follows Hall, Block delves deeper into what the Web is meaning for him and for those who bare all electronically. Landing in the cybermecca of Silicon Valley, Hall begins to work for Hotwired and hobnobs with such Web denizens as Howard Rheingold (Electric Minds) and Carl Steadman (Suck). Meanwhile, Block begins his own page. Home Page chronicles a unique period in the development of the Web and broaches important questions of private and public life in a media-saturated age when the traditional institutions and rituals of community are fading. --Meredith H. Sherter